Magic does exist, yes (glowy blue eyes and all!) and you will be given reasons for it, but I don’t plan on getting very deep into the exact mechanics of it. Its impact on the story matters more than the precise way it works.

I sort of DON’T want him to broaden his emotions. Nothing about you, Anna (I’m sure you’ll handle it well), but I’m tired of reading things where someone becomes ‘a more societally acceptable person’ just because people are there.

It seems no one wants to think about the fact that it *can* not work out, at all.

Hmm. I can see what you mean. The whole bad-person-redeemed-because-FEELINGS can annoy me, especially when it’s handled badly.

[The rest of this comment contains VERY MILD AND VAGUE SPOILERS]

Masahiro isn’t, when you get right down to it, a terrible person. I mean, yes, he’s grumpy as heck and he’s very inwardly focused – he has a LOT to deal with, and so has very little time to worry about what other people think or feel, and so he comes across as kind of terrible. Which, right now, he is. But beneath all of that, he does have the capacity to care and be, you know, thoughtful and not a bag full of grumps – it’s just been a long time since he had the opportunity/urge to exercise that part of himself.

Grassblades won’t suddenly turn into sweetness and cuddles, because that’s not the kind of comic it’s supposed to be, but one of Akane’s purposes in the story is to remind Masahiro that he’s still, you know, a person with actual feelings. He forgets, sometimes, that there’s something outside of the thing he’s carrying around inside him. He won’t wake up one day and be magically nice and friendly – he’ll just slowly become a person who admits that he has feelings that aren’t purely negative.

… Yeah, so Masahiro’s whole deal might be a metaphor for recovering from trauma. >.> He didn’t start OUT that way, but it’s kind of what he became over the course of my outlining/planning process. However, since his main trauma is anchored in the fact that he’s missing a bodypart, and that won’t ever be returned to him, it’s not like the trauma is ever going to 100% go away. He’ll just learn how to deal with it.